August 2d.  What a very strange thing, is it not, for man to pray?  It is the symbol at once of his littleness and of his greatness.  Here the sense of imperfection, controlled and silenced in the narrower reaches of his being, becomes audible.  Now he must utter himself.  The sense of need is so real, and the sense of Environment, that he calls out to it, addressing it articulately, and imploring it to satisfy his need.  Surely there is nothing more touching in Nature than this?  Man could never so expose himself, so break through all constraint, except from a dire necessity.  Natural Law, p. 279.

August 3d.  What is Truth?  The natural Environment answers, “Increase of Knowledge increaseth Sorrow,” and “much study is a Weariness.”  Christ replies, “Learn of Me, and ye shall find Rest.”  Contrast the world’s word “Weariness” with Christ’s word “Rest.”  No other teacher since the world began has ever associated “learn” with “Rest.”  Learn of me, says the philosopher, and you shall find Restlessness.  Learn of Me, says Christ, and ye shall find Rest.  Natural Law, p. 280.

August 4th.  Men will have to give up the experiment of attempting to live in half an Environment.  Half an Environment will give but half a Life. . . .  He whose correspondences are with this world alone has only a thousandth part, a fraction, the mere rim and shade of an Environment, and only the fraction of a Life.  How long will it take Science to believe its own creed, that the material universe we see around us is only a fragment of the universe we do not see?  Natural Law, p. 282.

August 5th.  The Life of the senses, high and low, may perfect itself in Nature.  Even the Life of thought may find a large complement in surrounding things.  But the higher thought, and the conscience, and the religious Life, can only perfect themselves in God.  Natural Law, p. 283.

August 6th.  To make the influence of Environment stop with the natural world is to doom the spiritual nature to death.  For the soul, like the body, can never perfect itself in isolation.  The law for both is to be complete in the appropriate Environment.  Natural Law, p. 283.

August 7th.  Take into your new sphere of labour, where you also mean to lay down your life, that simple charm, Love, and your life-work must succeed.  You can take nothing greater, you need take nothing less.  It is not worth while going if you take anything less.  The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 17.

August 8th.  Politeness has been defined as love in trifles.  Courtesy is said to be love in little things.  And the one secret of politeness is to love.  Love cannot behave itself unseemly.  You can put the most untutored persons into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of Love in their heart, they will not behave themselves unseemly.  They simply cannot do it.  The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 26.

August 9th.  I believe that Christ’s yoke is easy.  Christ’s “yoke” is just His way of taking life.  And I believe it is an easier way than any other.  I believe it is a happier way than any other.  The most obvious lesson in Christ’s teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving.  The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 29.